Director inspired by Sydney production

Woy Woy Little Theatre's June-July play is the multi prize-winning Martin McDonagh play, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane".

Director Mr John Hickey said he wanted to bring this play to the Coast since he saw the Sydney Theatre production four years ago.

He said he was thrilled with the dramatic relationships and timing his cast of four local actors is creating in rehearsals.

Mr McDonagh is the first playwright since Shakespeare to have had four plays running simultaneously in the West End.

His first play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, is "wildly funny, deeply affecting and grotesquely macabre all at the same time", according to Mr Hickey

"Action is set in the Irish Connemara home of Mag Folan, a manipulative and complaining old biddy.

"Both younger sisters have married young and moved away leaving Maureen, the 40-year-old spinster of the family, to take on the thankless task of caring for their mother. "When a handsome neighbour and old flame, Pato Dooley, briefly returns from England Maureen desperately grabs at her last chance for love, and escape.

"McDonagh re-invents the Ireland of the classic playwrights such as Synge and O'Connor.

"The Galway village has become a global village as the characters stare at Australian soaps on the box.

"It is an Ireland where "everybody leaves" drawn by jobs and money in England and America, yet it is a part of Ireland where some people still speak, and listen to, the ancient language.

"The play concerns the sometimes poisonous relationships between parents and children, an Irish theme since Playboy of the Western World.

"McDonagh creates four characters, Mag and her daughter Maureen, Pato and his young brother Ray.

"With just these four he creates a dramatic world of black comedy and tension."

The season opens on Friday, June 30, at 8pm at the Peninsula Theatre in McMasters Rd, Woy Woy.

The play will run on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8pm until July 15 with weekend matinees on Saturday July 15, and Sundays July 2, 9 and 16.

Bookings available and can be made by contacting 4344 4737.

Tickets are $19 for adults and $16 concessions.

Press release, June 6 Jan Taylor, Woy Woy Little Theatre